Many people know the story of Sir Roger Bannister. The legendary runner from the UK achieved something that physiologists said could never happen: In 1954, he broke the 4-minute mile. He believed he could do it, and he did. Since that event, the 4-minute mile has been broken hundreds of times. Bannister led the way.
This is a great story we all love to hear. It reminds us that many of the barriers to success are in our thinking. Bannister thought big!
My question is, “Where can we think bigger?” About 20 years ago I was working for a company that did an excellent job of tracking sales goals. Among the chatter throughout the sales team, the most common topic was the record revenue goal for one month: $320K. Many of us would come fairly close, but we always fell short. Like breaking the 4-minute mile, the $320K record was a barrier in our minds.
Then one day a new kid came to town. Hi name was Dan and for some reason he wasn’t aware of the 320K mark. He fervently dug in to his work and within three months he broke the 320K barrier by nearly 40K. It wasn’t a fluke. For the next several months he kept breaking the threshold. In less than a year he left to start his own company. We all loved Dan and were sorry to see him go. We missed him but we knew he left us with a gift of wisdom we could never forget: We challenged ourselves to think bigger and put our goals in a “can”!
